Democrats and Republicans shared presidential election
victories almost equally. Voter participation declined from
1900 to 1912 and then fluctuated during the rest of the
century with no clear trend.

The twenty-five presidential elections of the twentieth century produced twelve
Democratic and thirteen Republican presidents (see upper chart). In seven of these
elections, the winning margin in the popular vote was 5 percent or less. In the
1960 and 1968 elections, with Richard M. Nixon as the Republican candidate in
both, the winning margin was less than 1 percent. In two elections, the tally was
so close that the ultimate losers, Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 and Thomas E.
Dewey in 1948, were announced as the winners on the morning after the election.

American voters seemed to prefer a two-party system and were often reluctant to
cast their votes for third parties. Nevertheless, third-party candidates had
considerable
influence in four of the century’s twenty-five presidential elections.
Theodore Roosevelt won nearly 30 percent of the popular vote in 1912. Robert
La Follette captured 17 percent of the vote in 1924. George Wallace garnered 14
percent of the vote in 1968. Ross Perot won 19 percent of the vote in 1992. In
three of these elections—1912, 1968, and 1992—the winning candidates
garnered
a plurality, rather than a majority, of the votes cast.

The American system is unique among industrial democracies. It is characterized
not only by the long-term balance between the two major parties and resistance
to third-party candidates, but also by an electoral college system that maintains
the “winner-take-all” principle in every state.

Voter participation—the ratio of actual voters to the total number of eligible voters—
is difficult to calculate. Ballot-box stuffing and miscounts cause errors in the count of
actual voters, but these problems are trivial compared with the difficulty of
estimating
the number of eligible voters. Early in the century, each state decided
independently
who was qualified to vote in national elections. A number of states gave the vote
to resident aliens and a few to women. Residence, age, and literacy requirements
varied
from state to state, as did the administrative practices that in some states excluded
blacks, American Indians, and Asian Americans from the voting population.

Amendments to the Constitution, federal legislation, and a series of federal court
decisions that struck down literacy and residency requirements eliminated much of
the discretion the states had enjoyed. But substantial differences among states
remained. In 2000, for example, fourteen states denied the vote to convicted felons.

For every presidential election since 1916, several official estimates of voter
participation
are available. The lower chart shows the maximum and minimum estimates
of participation in each election. Both series indicate that voter participation
was exceptionally low in 1920, 1924, 1948, and 1996, and exceptionally high in
1952 and 1960.

Estimates of the percentage of eligible voters who vote are available from two
sources: a biennial report of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and
the Census Bureau’s Current Population Reports. HS series Y 27 and Y 79–83;
SA 1960, table 468; SA 1987, table 418; SA 1988, table 418; and SA 1997,
tables 462 and 464. For states banning felons, see “Five States Consider Easing
Ban on Felons Voting” at www.cnn.com/2000/US/02/12/felon.voting/index.html
(accessed September 21, 2000).